VHAT IS HISTORY ?

In English the terms 'history* and the 'past' are often used to describe the "grand total of all that has happened in the lives of hum«m beings" from the beginning of time (Oakshott 1967: p.l>. But as Jenkins (1992) has argued 'history* and the 'past' are not interchangeable. The past is what has already occurred. It has happened. History is the written or recorded knowledge of what is known about the past and represents a large body of knowledge that is

continually being added to and adapted as each generation seeks to give meaning to the past in terms of their present social reality. History is about selection; deciding from that great body of inherited,amorphous data, what is important and what is of interest in terms of the historian's present day viewpoint and predilections. Each generation of historians will subtley change the emphasis of

of history to select current concerns and beliefs. History therelore reveals as much about its creators as it dees of previous generations and eras (Oakshotn 1967, Jenkins 1992, Carr 1986, Lowenthal 1990).

"History is not the past, nor yet the surviving past; it is a

reconstruction of certain parts of the past (from surviving evidence) which in some ways have had relevance for the present circumstances of the historian that reconstructed them". (Gordon Connell-Smith & Howard Lloyd quoted in Tosh '1984: p.120)

Historians can never recover the totality of the past, they can only represent parts of it. Even the most detailed historical account can only incorporate a tiny fraction of even the relevant past. As Lowenthal (1990: p.215) has argued "the sheer pastness of the past precludes its total reconstruction". In order to create meaning from this vast body of data, historians use analytical and

methodological tools to select and interpret this material into a comprehensible framework. However, there is no set pattern for these selections or readings and there are an infinite number of interpretations open to the historian.

Again, this helps illustrate the distinction between history and the past; history is an account of the past and the past merely a set of events and situations that in themselves have no logical underpinning except that imposed upon them by historians. History is about the creation of stories by making links, emphasising relationships, compressing time and minimising discourse to aid comprehension. As Arragon wrote;

Time is foreshortened, details selected and highlighted, action,

concentrated, relations simplified not to alter or distort the actors and events but to bring them to life and to give them meaning". ( Arragon, quoted in Lowenthal 1990 :p.218)

Narrative linear explanations are widely used by historians because they

provide a clear temporal sequence and progression. The very nature of narrative explanation means xhat some events are given prominence, whilst many others are

ignored to provide a clear and comprehensive story which is then given an interpretative meaning or value. Lowenthal (.1990) has compared the construction of narrative to a pearl necklace;

"The pearls of history take their value not merely from being many and lustrous, but from being arranged in a causual narrative sequence; the narrative lends the necklace meaning as well as beauty" (Lowenthal 1990 : p.224).

Lowenthai (1990; has argued that the very process of writing history makes the past much more comprehensible than it was to the actors at the time or even in reality. The historian unlike the actors of the time, knows the outcome of the events they are studying, so inevitably hindsight will shape their

interpretation, even altering the tempo and contradictions as they appeared at the time. It is not only hindsight which shapes a historian’s reading of an event but subsequent developments after the period under review. As Lowenthai explained, the Second World War was regarded in a completely different manner in the mid 1960s than the 1950s, as a result not only of new evidence now available but, because of the impact of the Cold War, the United Nations and the economic power of Japan and Germany.

Although the passage of time enables historians to gain a better perspective and understanding of the impact of the event, it also prevents them recapturing the atmosphere and social reality of the era they are studying. As Maitland observed " it is too late for us to be Early English", (quoted in Jenkins 1992).

No maxter how immersed the historian is in the past it is impossible for them to divorce themselves from their own knowledge and perspectives withoux in some subtle fashion relaxing xhem to what the historian needs or desires to know.

"To explain the past to themselves and their audiences, historians go beyond the actual record to frame hypotheses in present day modes of thought. Editing data from his chosen era, synthesizing commentaries, the historian reaches an understanding distinctly ox his own time" .

(Lowenthal 1990 p. 216)

The language of the historical account also restructures images of the past. The historian translates his impression, gained from an examination of the traces of the past into words. The very language used imposes its own conventions on the historian's understanding of the past. Indeed when a reader absorbs the historian's text, the reader reconverts the word images into their own personal images which may differ radically from the historian's originals. As Lowenthal has argued any distance in space and time, culture or in point of view widens the gulf between narrator and audience. This holds true for the historian's own analysis of historical documents.

Collingwood (1986) argues that history is created in the mind of the historian. A historian cannot observe the past, but the experiences of those in the past have to be acted through in the historian's mind in order for M-q to comprehend them. Collingwood concludes that a historian can only know aspects of the past that he or she is able to rethink. Conversely, where historical data remains unintelligible to the historian it demonstrates that they are no longer able to conceptualise the thoughts of a previous era. For Collingwood history is

therefore the history of the mind, in which language plays an important role as

a provider oi meaning. W r m t e n material provides the bulk of the evidence by which historians construct the past, but language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, is continually evolving. Vords (.symbolic codes) are constantly shifting their symbolic meaning to reflect new social and cultural realities, making it impossible for the historian to ever truly recapture the motives and thoughts of previous generations. For Lowenthai (1990: p.215) a historical narrative “is not a portrait of what happened but a story about what happened".

Elton (1967) has argued that the study of history amounts to a search for truth that is achievable, because history is ultimately firmly grounded in reality. Although Elton acknowledges that the search for truth remains a

continual process of research and reinterpretation he believes that historical . methods guard against bias and provide " a recognised and tested way of

extracting from what that past has left, the true facts and events of that past" (Elton 1967: p.65). However no 'true account' of the past exists for historians to prove their accounts, as Jenkins explains;

"the world/past comes to us always already as stories and that we cannot get out of these stories (narratives) to check if they correspond to the real world/past, because these 'always already' narratives constitute

'reality"' (Jenkins 1992: p.9>.

Histories can therefore only be verified by comparing their work with the

established body of knowledge in the form of other trusted accounts rather than the actual events themselves. Yet as Lowenthal argues, unlike personal mem o r y the construction of history is a very public activity and ensures that the historian has to justify his or her interpretation to the reader through reference to other historical accounts and other sources.

History, unlike the past, is not fixed in time and space but remains open to different interpretations which will be influenced by the background and perspectives of the historian and by their own place in time. History is therefore subjective. However, history remains firmly grounded in the past, using real events as its inspiration, and it maintains a tight methodology in order to justify the conclusions that the historian draws from evidence or historical sources.

USIffG THE EVIDENCE

Historical sources encompass every kind of evidence left behind by past generations. A historian will select his or her evidence from a variety of sources including landscapes, inscriptions, material culture, first hand

accounts, documents, pictures photographs and oral evidence. The traces of the past are not complete, rather the historian, in order to understand an era, has to piece together fragmants of information to base his or her interpretation upon. The further back in time one goes the fewer fragments survive and consequently less can be extrapolated from them.

The primary sources available to historians are an incomplete record, not only because so much has been destroyed by accident or design, but more

fundamentally, because a great deal of what occured in the past left no material trace. This is particularly true of conscious and unconscious mental processes

(Tosh 1984). The written records of previous generations, consist only of facts that were considered of sufficient interest at the time. As Tosh (1984) has pointed out this inevitably means that the historical record tends towards the

ruling class, from whom the vast majority of the surviving sources derive. Mediaeval chroniclers like William Malmesbury or the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers were mere interested in the activities of kings and churchmen than the peasantry.

The primary source used by historians is the written word, in the form of letters, diaries, treaties or records, kept at the time for future posterity. Bagley <1965: p.l) explains that for the historian nothing can take the place of the written word; field patterns, coins, place names are impersonal compared with manuscripts, since the historian is ultimately concerned with people, their lives, thoughts,actions and beliefs, "his truest and most valuable material must always be the words and pictures men and women have written and drawn on clay, stone, parchment and paper". A good historian will learn to examine the evidence • and interpret it. Nothing is taken at face value. The historian weighs one piece of evidence against another to try to spot inaccuracies and distortions in particular sources, and considers the subtext. Documents, by their very nature, are subjective and liable to error and personal bias. Often, written material was produced for a specific purpose-perhaps for propaganda or the justification of previous actions, and this will slant the perspectives of the author. The author s background and perspectives will also Odffect eye witness accounts of various events; inevitably a British Official of 1919 would regard the A m r i b a r Massacre (1919) differently to an Indian observer.

Historians have gained valuable insights into the past by ignoring the original intentions of the author and concentrating on what other information the text

will reveal. Emmanuel Le Ray Ladurie 's (1990) study of Montalliou, uses the incidental detail in the records of the Inquisition's investigation into the French Cathars, to reconstruct the mental, emotional and sexual life of 13th century peasants. Similarly Wrigley and Schofield pioneered quantitative methods in their examination of ISth century Parish Registers to calculate demographic trends in Britain in the 18th century (Lee and Schofield 1984).

Although museums will use written material in constructing their interpretations of the past, objects provide the main historical source. Surviving objects from the past are often seen as valuable clues in the understanding of the past providing visual evidence of how people lived, in the form of buildings, domestic implements or machinery. In a recent article Gaby Porter (1989) criticised museums for using artefacts as value free evidence, as a direct reflection of the past. Even in the more recent past it is usually the special or unusual that survives, the jewelled medieval cross, the Michaelangelo

painting, the 19th century wedding dress. More often than not it is the

possessions of the wealthy and important that survive, rather than those of the lower classes whose possessions were used until beyond repair, before finally being thrown away. Although objects provide important clues to how people lived, they are not a comprehensive record. Inanimate objects cannot help the historian understand the emotions and thoughts of past generations.

Increasingly historians are using paintings, drawings and photographs to provide further insights into the past. Again, these have to be used with carejthe historian has to consider the motives for the painting and make

allowances for artistic convention. Museums use contemporary drawing to help contextualise objects and illustrate stories. In exhibitions on industrial

England it is quite common to see the same illustrations appearing in dixferent museums. Typical is George Walker's painting of a woman using a Spinning Jenny or Eyre Crow's painting The Dinner Hour. Wigan (1374), which is often used to show visitors what factory life was like, but is rarely qualified. At Kelham visitors are shown a picture of a group of buffer girls dressed in the

'traditional' red scarves; the picture is provided as evidence despite its romantic genre. Gaby Porter (1989) has also criticised the use of photographs in museums, in which they are seen to "offer instant gratification, history at a glance". Porter feels that many curators simply accept the conventions of

realism ascribed to photographs and fail to grasp the context in which

photographs were taken. She is particularly critical of those curators who crop promotional photographs for use in exhibitions to illustrate working conditions or domestic life, without assessing the photograph's value as historical

evidence.

For more recent periods of study historians are using oral history. Ordinary members of the public are interviewed about aspects of their life and work, giving these people a direct role in creating knowledge. Many museums have used oral history to acquire new information about objects in their collections and about social conditions, customs and many other aspects which do not appear in printed archive or photographic sources (Howarth 1982, O'Connell 1992) Beamish uses oral history to help its reconstruction of North East England in 1913. Other Museums, like N.F.H.C in Grimsby use recorded oral history in the^ir

displays, enabling visitors to'hear first hand accounts of life aboard a

trawlership in the 1950s. However, as Tosh (19S4) has pointed out, oral history has to be used carefully. Keraories are filtered through subsequent experiences, and are often subtley changed as the individual absorbs information from other sources or the memories become overlaid with nostalgia.